What to bring:
I am going to leave out the obvious stuff (cloths, medication, toiletries) so extra things you wouldn't normally bring on a trip
*Blanket/sleeping stuff - I have blankets and sleeping pads here, but if you have room in the car bring some because I'm not sure if I'll have enough (so long as a few people bring them we should be OK).
*Extra pair of glasses
*Tick repellant bug spray
*Combat cloths, close toed shoes and long sleeve stuff (at least Carderock has ticks)*Blasters to bring: Anything goes blaster, medium primary, light primary, pistol (pistol is optional, if we play a round with them I have a lot but bring one anyway)

Schedule (subject to change):
I have made some edits to how I am doing the schedule this year. I have decided to list games in the approximate order we play them in, but list how long the game will last as apposed to "it goes from Xpm-Xpm." This way if I game runs longer then expected it wont be a problem. Also for all games, I am implementing a 15 minute rule, after 15 minutes if it is decided by the group that the round isn't going well, it can be called off. This applies the next time the teams meet, if you are in a good ambush spot you won't have to come out to talk with the other team. I also want to mix it up by having anything goes rounds, light gun rounds, and medium rounds, but they will be decided on the spot before each game.Friday
1:00pm-6:00pm - Arrival at Scott's house - It is OK to come after 6:00, but you my have to meet us elsewhere (try to come before midnight though, I don't do well with less then 9 hours)
6:00pm - 7:30pm - Dinner at the American City Diner
8:00pm - 11:00pm - Night wars at Westland Middle School - this all depends on how tired people are after driving all the way to my house
11:00pm - Get everything ready for Saturday (put guns in cars (unloaded), get any extra equipment ready/in the car and in general make sure the only preparation needed in the morning is to change cloths)

Saturday
8:30am-9:00am -Wake up/have breakfast - I think combining these together makes sense, the more you sleep in the less time you have to eat (though we will certainly try to get you up in time to eat)
9:00am-9:30am - Pack food for the day, this will give a chance for any stragglers (most likely my friends) to get ready
9:45am - Go to Sycamore island/fill guns - so long as everything is ready to go on Friday, this shouldn't take an hour like last year
0:45 - OHK round - We don't do enough of these and the island should be perfect for it
1:00 - Multi-flag CTF (multiple half hour games)
?-12:30pm random games until lunch
12:30pm-1:00pm - Lunch
1:30 - naval war beach landings+soak and destroy (the two rounds will only be a half hour each, but I'm allowing extra time for preparation) see below for more details
2:00/1:30 - Long OHS round (time depends how long people want "long" to be)
1:00 - 5 base outpost
?-6:00 - Other rounds (zombies, one flag CTF etc.)
6:00pm - 7:00pm - Order pizza for dinner and drive back to my house. I wanted to eat at the island, but I think it would be too complicated. We also need to pack for the night wars

8:00pm-11:00pm - Night wars at Westland Middle School.
11:00p-? - Prepare equipment for Sunday locations do not have good refilling spots, everything must be filled before we leave on Sunday!

Sunday:
8:30am-9:00am -Wake up/have breakfast/pack snacks
9:15am - Drive to Westmoreland Park
1:00 - OHS round (around the upper park area if we can, depends how crowded it is)
0:45 - CTF round in lower woods area
1:00 - One Flag CTF
?-1:30pm - Other games people want to play.
1:30pm-2:30pm - Drive back to my house and have lunch, fill everything for next rounds
2:30pm - Drive to Carderock
0:30 - 3 team OHK with small boundaries
2:00/1:30 - Long OHS (again, depends how long we want "long" to be)
1:00 - Outpost
1:00 - HLT (specific spot, attackers get anything goes, defenders get light primaries)
0:45 - Handicap OHS, people get light/medium/heavy blasters depending on there performance in games so far
?-5:00pm - Other games people want to play
5:00pm-8:00pm - Dinner at my house, hang out and get ready for night wars
8:00pm-11:00 - Night wars at Westland Middle School (optional, depends how tired people are)

Monday:
Whenever - Wednesday - Get out of my house!!! People can really stay as long as they want, even a few extra days if they want.

The naval war:
So long as the following conditions are met, I still plan on having a naval war but it will be very revamped from the failure of last year. (1) we will need at least 11 people for it to work at all and (2) the river must be slow moving with very little wind. Beyond that I plan on limiting the defense to light primaries only while the attackers get anything goes. The landing zone will be the whole lower 1/3 of the island, the lower most dock on each side being the boundary. Once an attacker boat lands, it becomes a spawn point, but at least one of its occupants must be alive in order for it to count (if both get shot before it comes to a stop on the shore they must go out again). Once the attackers land, they must destroy two targets, one located in between the boat racks, and another by the start of the zipline. The winner is decided on which team can defend their targets the longest. If the attackers fail to land in 15 minutes the defenders must withdraw and allow them to land. If by chance one team succeeds in landing within 15 minutes and one fails the landing stage, the team that succeeds wins by default.

The deal with Memorial Day is that I have to take the day off whether I want to or not lol. So I figured it's better use of my vacation time to do so. If the weekend if the 23rd to 26th doesn't work, then the 16th to 19th should almost equally well. I'm not going to hold up anyone else though. My only real requirement is that we follow our standard weekend schedule.

Unfortunate about the water balloons, but we'll deal with it. I won't be bringing any launchers this year anyway due to limited car space. (I need room to deliver a computer to DX and trade for some Nerf blasters.) In its place will probably be some sort of AP water cannon, if I can get one together in time.

Do you think you could try getting the barn in for the weekend? Or are we staying at the same spots as before?

If you need a co-host, I can volunteer for that job, although anyone with more experience can take priority for the position.

CA99 wrote:^
Do you think you could try getting the barn in for the weekend? Or are we staying at the same spots as before?

If you need a co-host, I can volunteer for that job, although anyone with more experience can take priority for the position.

What barn are you talking about? As far as being a co-host, I'd be OK with it. Really I just need someone else to help keep track of everything. Last year I'd get half the people together to do something, then while I was trying to organize everyone else, they'd some how get "unready." It wasn't so much the community, more my friends, but there will probably be more of them next year so extra help would be great. If there were two people who knew what needed to be done to get organized, it would go a lot faster then me trying to explain everything myself. I also plan on explaining the steeps needed to get ready for each day (such filling guns before going to Carderock) on the board before the event. I'm not feel that great right now and it is messing with my thinking, so I'd rather not explain too much tonight because I wouldn't even understand it in the morning! - hope that makes sense, like I said, I think I might be getting sick as my head is spinning like mad.

"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

Not sure when I'd be available to go at this point. I know the last day of finals for me is May 14th, so I couldn't come before then.

Allow me to make some suggestions:
If we are to fight at Sycamore Island again, I would really love to do a long round (like 2 hours at least) there. I figured out that it'd work really well because there is plenty of concealment but it's small and narrow enough where losing the other team won't be too big an issue. If you don't do a long round there I won't come! :p Though that's only if there's no wind. I'm not sure I'd want to fight there at all if there is a strong wind like last time. It results in teams stacking up on the ends of the island.

I have no problem with banning WBLs or even balloons. I don't like using balloons much and all they do is cause us to waste time filling them, plus I can't name a single legit water balloon kill in any battle I've ever been in. Launchers don't take that much more time to set up than just plain old balloons (all you have to do is load and pressurize them, which takes under a minute; filling balloons is what really kills time). That said, if people want to use balloons, by all means go ahead, but they'd better have them ready before the start of the fighting.

I only want to do the naval war if the offense can attack the island from all sides. I have come to f***ing hate one-dimensional defense games, and doing them with boats is even worse. I suggest doing 1-flag CTF where the flag is in the center of the island, and the offense has to capture it and take it out into the middle of the river (or at least far enough away from shore so as to be out of water gun range). The defense can have a limited amount of lives, so they'll be pressured to attack the offenders when the latter is most vulnerable (while landing). We can use the same respawn rules for the offense as last time, even though it was a little clunky. After typing this I'm actually really excited to try it. However like you said, we should have at least like 12 people and there should be little to no wind. Also, keep it in mind that naval rounds do take more time to set up than regular ol' landlubber rounds.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I wasn't a huge fan of Carderock while fighting there last year. The biggest issue was the lack of accessible water sources, but it was also kind of rocky/hilly and I remember most of the rounds resulted in one team capturing a hill and staying there for the rest of the battle. Of course, I didn't get to see most of the park; Scott, you should scout it out for good locations before deciding on fighting there. If you can't find any good places, is there anywhere else around you that would work for a war? If I remember right, there are plenty of parks in the area.

Is there any way we could camp out at one of the locations? I feel like it'd be easier to get up and go if we're staying at the actual battlefield. I don't know about you guys, but I always wake up much earlier when I'm in a tent than when I'm not. Also, camping is fun! And I think CA99 was referring to you mentioning staying at your uncle's/grandfather's/whoever's farm and fighting there. I know you said something about it somewhere.

If you need help with the event, it might be a good idea to have all the community veterans help with running it instead of just two people. As for a schedule, I would suggest coming up with a playlist of games to be held on each day, and just make sure to do them all before the day is done. Don't worry about setting precise (or even semi-precise) times for when they're held; just set the round lengths and play them whenever we can. Additionally, I would come up with a bunch of "backup" or "overflow" rounds. They would be like "filler" battles; not the big highlight rounds, just things to do if one of the "must-do" rounds end up not working and/or if we get ahead of schedule. Even if they're just short (yet action-packed) 1HS rounds like the no-stats battle we did at Carderock last year, they'll still offer some fun. I just don't want to make the trip and end up sitting around doing nothing (I can do that anywhere) while people play video games and sleep.

Well I wouldn't really consider either of those to be "legit" kills; the hit I made with the Douchenator fell short and only hit the target because it bounced off the water, and Scott was unarmed (I think...?) and stuck without a shoe when marauder hit him. We've never had a clean balloon kill as far as I know, which is likely partially due to the fact that we made it so water balloon splashes don't count. I think this is stupid; if enough water gets on you from the "explosion", it should count as a hit. As with blasters, a few drops wouldn't be a kill, but if the person feels enough water, it should totally count.

Do you think you could make it to this? You said DC was 8 hours away, and that's not too bad.

I carried balloons to Frozen Fury and Downpour. Never had a problem with the time taken to fill them. All we need is a rule that doesn't permit game starts to be delayed due to WB filling. It doesn't take much time to stock up on 2 or 3 for a game, but the amount needed for a WBL is what takes a lot of time. These would have to be prepared during the night before a game if we ever use them, but they're too damn unwieldy, which is the second factor that takes a lot of time. (I'm working on remedies for this: integrated hand pump WBL's with smaller air tanks and better ergonomics [at the sacrifice of power], and good backpack container systems for water balloons.)

Balloons are already banned from Sycamore Island anyway, and I don't mind experimenting with WBL shenanigans at another war. If I do, I'll eliminate all lengthy processes for them except for the balloon filling, which would take place during the night or any other time we're not fighting.

Most projectile based games do not count ricochets, except Airsoft. I'm up for changing water balloon hits to include splatter, but it would have to equal that of a tap shot. The water balloon hit marauder made at MOAB was definitely legit, just under unusual circumstances/game rules.

Asymmetrical attack/defend games are definitely my cup of tea, but the final decision for them is all up to Scott. I'll propose some game setup ideas, I guess, and see who cares for them.

I'm up for camping, but prefer a limit of 2 or 3 nights in a row until further notice, which is the duration of the whole thing anyway. The fresh air is really great for rest.

*ahem* *cough* Soakemore 2013 that tap located behind the barn and the bucket *cough* achewwwwww..."where is Sam?...oh prolly still filling balloons..."

I don't mind a water balloon ban, they take too long to fill and are a hassle to transport. I might not even bring the water cannon, it depends on what kind of rounds are planned. I love that thing, but it admittedly takes at least 5 minutes to set up a shot (of which 4 are spent just pouring in water).

I can bring the Outpost sticks if you want to try that gametype again, I think it would work on Sycamore Island pretty well. Put one in the treehouse, one under the barn, one near the canoe rack, one on the dock maybe, you know spread it out so the teams have to use the whole island. It could get pretty intense since there's so many ways to sneak around the island and not many places that are particularly easy to defend.

Asymmetric attack/defend games are still kind of necessary, to increase variety of rounds, act as filler, bridges between super long/serious rounds, uneven numbers, and for unexpected situations. They just need to be well-designed so it doesn't become a standoff. Don't forget that some of the stagnation in those rounds is purposefully injected by veterans, whose best interest is not to lose control of a battle. Having chaos, wild momentum swings, and lots of hits are fun for players, but a nightmare for commanders. I want to have fun, but I also want to win. Game design is king when it comes to have a fun round. The 2 flag CTF in the factory was poorly designed due to the lack of alternate entrances, but it wasn't intended to be a one dimensional game. The 1 flag CTF in the foundry was intended to be a one dimensional game, but it was really fun. Seal, did you like the 1 flag CTF games in the barn? It could be attacked from several sides. That is the kind of way I want to use abandoned buildings in the future, where the defense is really besieged in the building.

There are TONS of parks in the NW DC area. One of the biggest differences between this area and there is that they have preserved their riverbanks, everything with water is a long riparian park. Scott, one place I would recommend scouting is Westmoreland Park. It's not the easiest place to find, but it's really cool. There is a long stream running down the center, with trails on both sides. There is a variety of terrain and lots of good concealment by the stream. I discovered this place by accident while trying to find the fastest walking route between Tenleytown and the C&O Canal. It lies just outside the District boundary on the Maryland side, so no problems with DC cops. There's also a network of riparian parks south of Tenleytown between it and the Potomac, but I don't know them as well.

marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

I'm still quite "meh" on outpost, mainly since I haven't played a good game of it yet. Still open to trying it in different configurations though. I'd actually like to try an asymmetric outpost round where all outposts start as the defending team's, but cannot be re-captured. Asymmetric rounds force one team to do something; by the nature of their setups, a stalemate is uncommon except in cases of large skill disparities and/or water supply disparities. The setup on Northgate foundry was actually perfect for it, because the defense lacks good means to refill for the defenders. If you're out, you have to go all the way to the creek to fill, which gives the attackers more time to push. This feature was lacking in the barn 1-flag CTF, but was made up for by the sheer variety of attack avenues. Either way, the end result is that the defense should crumble after a set period of time.

I think we should definitely run some asymmetric rounds with long or no time limits (except for, say, a 30 minute call where people vote whether they want to continue a round after 30 minutes of play).

For any variant of Outpost and CTF, we can have only one or multiple objectives.
The only "complicated" one here is the Naval Landing. Here's my version of it.

Phase 1: Soakn' Destroy Attack Targets. Requires at least 3 boats. A setup of 4-6 attack targets are placed along the shoreline. The objective is to soak one or two of them, and once that happens, the attackers win the phase. 15 minute time limit or whatever. Defenders may spawn anywhere after 30 seconds as long as they are well out of range of the attackers. (Say, at a specific tree.)

Phase 2: Attackers land anywhere they wish. Any territory behind the attack targets or at the boats are instant spawn zones. Defenders' move back to defend 3 Outpost objectives that cannot be recaptured, and may only spawn at an outpost if no opponents are in shooting range. Their permanent spawn point is upstairs on the deck of the clubhouse. 15 minute time limit.

Phase 3: Defenders' spawns remain the same. The objective is 1-flag CTF. Deliver the flag to the deck to win.

Another game setup: Treehouse Outpost Assault:
- Outpost attack/defend game at treehouse.
- Defenders guard 3 outposts scattered about. 1 of them should be well out of treehouse range, 2 of them should be close enough to the treehouse to catch glancing droplets or full shots from it, and the last one should be well behind the treehouse near the end of the island. This may require the attackers to have an APWC to crack the defense for the last outpost, but the last outpost is really there as more of a challenge, not intended to be captured. For a round like this however, I think the attackers need better weaponry in general, so the first outpost is captured easily (as is the intention) and the 2nd ones are a reasonable, but achievable challenge.
- Spawning: No permanent spawn points. All are on the outposts that you own.

Clubhouse CTF multi-flag Assault Special:
- Defenders pick 3 flag locations in secret. Attackers may not know their locations at this time.
- All flags must be within 50ft of the clubhouse, must be easily reachable by individuals, and must be out in plain view without having to move anything around.
- Defenders may only spawn at these flags. (HINT HINT, attackers.) Attackers may spawn anywhere past south of the picnic area (treehouse end of the island). Defenders are not allowed into this spawn area.
- Dunno on the time limit. 20 minutes?

I would like to propose that we change how we run our time limits. When the time limit is up, everyone freezes where they are, and a vote is cast on whether to continue for another amount of time. This way, time limits won't cut off any fun rounds in progress.

Having the naval war go all the way around the island would be way to big an area, it would take about 5 minutes just to circle around to the other side. If we end up having 20 people at this thing, it might work, but otherwise the whole island would be way too big an area. I was planning on widening the landing area to go from the ferry all the way to the bottom tip of the island. Another thought was to have the the both sides of the lower 1/4 of the island be up for landings. The landing area last year was way too small, I'd rather error on the side of too big this year, I just don't want us to take half the battle circling around to the other side. I really want to do a long OHS on the island too, it is perfect for it! I have also played CTF there and it works pretty well.

I plan on scouting Carderock much more this year and plan on having more objective based games to keep people from just holding off on hills. Carderock would be a great location for Outpost, though that is one of the reasons I want to scout more as I want to know where to put the flags ahead of time. Another round I plan to throw in is OHK, but more fast passed then normal with three teams and a small battle area (picture the air pressure rounds from Downpour 2011). One note about Carderock though, we should fill all the guns the night before as well as as many water bottles as we can fit in the cars. I didn't make it clear enough last year, but refilling there is not easy, fill before you go! It will be a little easier this year though, I plan to bring a long hose so that when we do run out of refill bottles we can run water from the spigot to the parking lot instead of having to lug all the guns over to it.

I've been chatting on the phone with CA99 and having it a group effort from all the community veterans sounds like the best idea. I should be able to plan the event and set up the rules just fine myself, but during the event itself it would be great to have help keeping things on track. Having a collective idea of what we are supposed to do should work much better then one or two people barking orders.

Also, what do you guys think of my 15 minute rule idea? Do you think that is too short? Last year we spent so much time arguing about how rounds should be played, I figure this will allow us to spend that time trying the round out instead, if it doesn't work, we take the same teams and weapons and move onto the next game.

Edit: A lot more was said while I was writing this
CA99: I like your idea of everyone freezing at the end of the time limit and voting on whether the round should continue. The only problem I see with this is that it would require most people to have watches and to synchronize them. As far as your ideas for the naval war go, it sounds good and all, but I think it would be to complicated. Remember how much trouble some of my local friends had with simple stuff like what counts as a hit? If others are OK with it, I'm all for changing the rules for water balloons to include splatter, although I must tell you, none of those shots you fired at the tree house would have counted even with splatter. I must tell you as well though that the clubhouse is off limits except for refilling, as much fun as it would be to lay siege to it, there is often other people (non-combatants) going in and out and the stone steps around it become like ice when wet too. I have always wanted to play soak and destroy, so if you are willing to help set it up (make the objects to be destroyed) I'd love to try it.

Duxburian: I will defenantly check out Westmoreland Park, it is really close to me and I didn't even know it existed! I also know of several other locations, but the main reason why I had it at the two/three I did was because those were the best that I knew of. Part of the problem is that many good locations (such as from what I remember of Cabin John Park), wile great for battling, are often very crowded. I have a few places to check out though, but I want to wait until the weather gets better so I can get a good idea of how many people are there on a nice day. DC police are worse, but unless you are battling right next to the white house, it is probably more likely to get the police called on you in Maryland than DC just because of how stuck up people are.

"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

I forgot to mention the complexity issue with a 3 phase game. It should definitely not be done before everyone has played some sort of outpost game or multi flag CTF assault variation.

SnD objectives are very simple, but are one time uses. The ideal target would probably be a square of paper towel nailed to a tree.

Watches should be quick to reset. If It's too much trouble, chances are that the game needs to end anyway.

Also, I'd advise people to cut up some water bottles into funnels to use for refilling. Not all sources nor blasters are easy to fill with. I may just opt to skip the VHS (or any variation thereof) and just use a funnel this time. A funnel and tube would be ideal for sinks, but we haven't had a serious need for it yet.

Yeah, water balloon splatter would have to be the same amount of water as the amount that counts as a hit from a blaster in order to be a kill. I mean, I see no reason why it wouldn't. It really wouldn't make that big a difference either, because most water balloons don't hold a whole lot of water (unless you want to fill party balloons or something, haha) and you'd need to get like all of it on you.

I did enjoy the 1-flag CTF games in the barn. I liked defending best because it was so frantic; people were attacking from all sides and I had to cover so many places at once. Attacking wasn't quite as fun, but I still liked it. The foundry game that I played in was nothing to write home about though. I suppose I missed the better games that were played there, but in general I do not like one-dimensional defense games, whether I'm attacking or defending. I don't think we ever played such a game that I really liked. With only one direction of attack, you usually get teams staring each other down hoping that someone will make a move so there'll be some action. With many directions, you actually want people to stop attacking, and it's a challenge to hold them back. You want to stall as long as possible so you can hold out longer than the enemy. That's usually easy to do in single-direction games, so it's boring. I like challenges. Being on offense is also a lot less frustrating when you have more attack possibilities.

Yeah, we should avoid complicated games if we're to have so many newbies. With that said, I still don't really want to do the naval war in just one area, even if it is a little bigger than last year. Scott's idea of using both sides of the lower part of the island sounds a little better though. I think it'd be better to do some kind of SnD game for that type of setup rather than 1-flag CTF. Having to obliterate a piece of paper towel sounds pretty good. Still, we need to work quickly to set it up. Last year's naval round took what, a half hour? That's kinda unacceptable.

I don't really want to do another battle at the treehouse. The problem is that it's situated on a really narrow section of the island, making it hard to flank. If there was more space around it I would totally be up for it, but seeing how it turned out last time...I'm not thrilled about retrying a round there. I suppose giving the defense light weapons might work, but I'd rather do something else.

Don't care about time limit rules or whatever. I'll probably have more to say later.

I really like the idea of obliterating a paper towel. That is a tangible objective that also focuses on soaking and output and not just on hits. Of course, this assumes the game would be played with players having to respawn or take time out of the match when they are hit. Pretty cool.

There's several possible definitions for the objective: first by changing the object itself (smaller or larger paper towels, or toilet paper, or tissue, or perhaps knocking over an object if it's not going to happen on its own [such as via wind]), and second by changing the definition of "destroyed". For some games, we may want to just opt for full target soakage, without oblitheration, especially for something like a paper towel.

That's 3 votes in favor of changing the definition of water balloon hits. I'd like the top dog members to offer their opinions. We need to be clear on some other things too; for example, DX does not count any hits below the knees. We need things like this to be standardized.

The treehouse setup I proposed was intended to shift things around and play more progressively. With inferior weaponry, the defending team won't have the same kind of iron defense as they did before, so if an attacker can sprint on past, they have a chance to capture the last outpost. It lacks flanking opportunities, and the setup will vary heavily depending on the number of players (more players making it more difficult or impossible to crack the defense). This is what happened at the Foundry CTF assault games; with fewer players, the game flowed very well, but once everyone was back, the defense became a lot stronger and took a lot more time to wear down. (It was just about to collapse before we decided to end the game.)

I think we're too closed to ruleworking on team balances. There are lots of ways to balance games to be more interesting. For example, our last CTF assault round at the Foundry could've been counterbalanced with more flags to compensate for the additional players added. This adds a more progressive element to the game, where it becomes "how many objectives can we capture", as opposed to "can we capture the objective?".

As mentioned in a previous thread, we need these kinds of game adaptations to balance games and make for more interesting play. Game setups need to scale up and down on the player count, and objective games handle this fairly well when you want to force both teams to play in a certain area. 1HK/1HS games are VERY difficult to set up properly for most fields, where both teams can start in one place and end up on the other side of the state before the game's finished. (And before anyone scores any hits.)

I'm still quite "meh" on outpost, mainly since I haven't played a good game of it yet.

In other words, Michigan has no steep little hills :p

The way to make Outpost play more chaotic is to place the bases in areas that are tough to defend and/or can be approached from many angles and/or can be overrun. It scales up or down using positioning of the bases and number of bases. 7 sticks should be more than enough.

The reason I don't take (splatter) hits below the knees and other people shouldn't either is how impossible it is to check shoes, socks, camo pants, etc. That's also where blaster leakage often ends up, as well as mud/water if you step in such. You can get those wet just by moving through wet plants. I still take low hits if it's a direct stream, like at the barn CTF where Scott soaked my shoe with a laminated stream at close range. If I had my way, splatter damage would only count in the "strike zone" (knees to chest), but people want it for some reason.

As for balloons, I wouldn't mind counting bursts, like when it breaks in mid-air and the water falls on you. I am absolutely against counting splash damage off solid objects because that's a slippery slope. If that counts, I should be able to bounce a normal stream off a wall and count that. Those are clearly not hits and I don't understand why people want to add them. Water balloons are not grenades, they are water balloons. If it bursts on a wall or the ground and the splash lands on someone, it didn't hit them, it hit the wall/ground. I guess I would be ok with counting overhead splash damage, like if you toss a balloon at a tree branch over the enemy's head and it bursts on that and the water falls on them. It's kind of still blatantly not a hit...but it is the same effect as angling streams into people, so I have no problem with it.

I'm not to fond of retrying the treehouse. Even if the defense has light primaries, a Python 2 could still threaten a 2000 and keep them out of range. It took the water cannon to do anything in that round, because the only way to hit them in the treehouse was to shoot a large stream at it, but then have the stream die and fall over the people behind the boards. The physics of that are really tough to get right and when I took that shot I was completely guessing the range. Nothing else had the intimidation factor required to get in range and the WBLs were never going to be effective with the treehouse boards set up in the way they were. Direct fire would not place the water in the way and spot necessary.

I'm also not feeling OHK this time around, mainly because newbies are not very good with taking hits, so the effort required to hit them all would basically be like OHS anyway. Some of that problem is just that we have a more specific version of hits, while the more universal view is a direct stream counts (when I say "direct" I don't mean parallel to ground, I mean the whole stream stays together) and splatter doesn't. If the stream breaks up, they are far less likely to count it. If you put a CPS sized blast in their chest from 10ft away, with none of it breaking up and all of it soaking them, they don't dispute that. However, changing our rules to only allow direct streams with no break up would be a mess. Engagements might happen at really close range and people might get pretty decently soaked from splatter. It would be tough to justify a direct 1x stream being a hit, while the next guy with water all over isn't dead. Hit rules are still one of the most problematic issues we're faced with.

Using both sides of the island would be great for the naval war, although that really depends on flow conditions in the river. Scott, you should probably have a Plan B just in case the Potomac is really going like last time. I'd like to see a multi-stage round where the first stage is the landing, the 2nd stage is a general fight on the island, and the 3rd is maybe the treehouse or other defendable area. The attackers land, progress through the island, and try to wipe out the defense in their last stand. If the rules are simple, it could work.

marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

I guess we didn't clarify balloon splatter enough. Most of the time, they're just glancing droplets, but a few payloads can actually deliver mostly to a player (even from wall splatter), and those would be better to count. The prime example would be someone standing behind a mesh fence, and the fence gets pelted with a balloon whose payload clearly goes through.

I can agree on skipping OHK. The treehouse seems unpopular enough to scrap out of the playlist entirely. I'm the only one who'd play it again, and Scott didn't seem that enthusiastic about it, so it's probably better off gone.

Problems with hit rules won't go away unless we were able to standardize a target vest system, or unless we switched to anything not water warfare. (And we all know how well either of those would go.)

Naval wars can really go anywhere. I would favor one side of the island if we don't have more than 3 boats, but I'd definitely also favor expanding to at least twice the playable shoreline from last time.

We can make up a multi-phase type of game without naval wars too. Sycamore Island is set up well for any sort of multi-stage objective. DX, I haven't seen interest from you for such a game in the past lol. That said, as far as keeping it simple goes, the best way may simply be Outpost Assault instead of 3 phase attack. Objectives can be completed in any order, and the switch between phases has potential to confuse the clueless.

Because the plans were heading in a way overcomplicated direction. Even the naval round last year was getting too complicated. The stages need to be individual rounds (so no one is confused) and really simple. Naval wars have better multi-stage potential simply because the premise is universally understood. Landing on a beach and then pushing inland is a familiar war storyline, every WWII movie in the Pacific theater is like that.

Objective body targets would still not settle the splatter vs direct shot problems unless a specific amount of water is physically necessary to mark the target as "hit". Otherwise, the problem of there being enough splatter or not would simply shift from clothing to targets, nothing would really change.

marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers